 
Chester Rosson (May 1997) Practitioner of an older, more European-influenced style of music, Santiago Jimenez maintained the tradition of the conjunto playing a large variety of dance rhythms, from polkas and mazurkas to waltzes, schottisches, and redovas. His use of the contrabass or tololoche on his early recordings led to the later standard introduction of electric bass in modern conjunto bands. In addition, many of his original compositions have become part of the standard repertory of contemporary conjuntos. Son of accordionist Patricio Jimenez of Eagle Pass, Santiago Jimenez played two-row button accordion from the age of eight. During his teens he was a sideman for his father at bailes in San Antonio as well as rural dances all over South Texas. He learned a wide variety of traditional European dance tunes to please the Texas Czech and German audiences that hired the band. By the age of twenty he was playing live on San Antonio radio station KEDA. In 1936 Santiago recorded his first disc for Decca, two traditional songs he had learned from his father, for which he was paid the grand sum of $21 a side. When the Mexican Victor label offered $75 per recording, Jimenez gave them twelve songs that preserved some of his best work from the 1940s, among them the perennial favorites, "Viva Seguin" and "La Piedrera." All his life he worked as a janitor, supplementing his income with his music earned at dances around the West Side. Never traveling far from his birthplace (except for an eleven-year residency in Dallas during the late sixties and seventies) Santiago played regularly at El Gaucho, a club in the heart of West Side San Antonio. Thanks to such preservationists as Ben Tavera-King of Arhoolie Records (which released a 1980 recording of Santiago playing with his son Flaco and Juan Viesca) and the continuing careers of his sons, the characteristic style of Santiago Jimenez, Sr., continues to entertain today. |
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